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Anti-Israel protest in Rome. The hatred has always been against Jews (archives)
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Photo: GNET
Elyakim Haetzni
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Jews in the service of Israel's enemies

Op-ed: It's time for the State of Israel to reassess its relationship with Diaspora Jews who have embraced anti-Israel views and initiatives.

According to the polls, England's Jews will vote in the upcoming elections for British Prime Minister David Cameron, a gentile who is less hostile towards Israel than the Jewish Ed Miliband, the chairman of the Labour Party. A significant part of the Unites States' Jews embrace President Barack Obama although he favors the enemies of the Jewish state.

  

 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's appeal to France's Jews, who are suffering from anti-Semitism and terror, that they have a warm home to return to, was met alongside the applause by objections from Jews seeking to remove any doubt from their pure Frenchness.

 

Jews in the world, especially in the media and academia, are attacking us and even calling for a boycott of Israel. They are led by J Street, a powerful American organization which serves as a mirror image of AIPAC, the great Jewish lobby. While AIPAC stands by Israel, J Street stands by the American administration and its anti-Israel views and initiatives.

 

And so the question of the Jewish state's relationship with the Diaspora Jewry is back on Israel's agenda. Here's a reminder: The Land of Israel's birthright position was only recognized by the Jewish people following the Holocaust. A smaller catastrophe was not enough to convince the majority of Jewish people that Zionism was the solution to the "Jews' troubles."

 

J Street conference. A significant part of US Jews embrace President Obama although he favors the enemies of the Jewish state (Photo: Moshe Zusman)
J Street conference. A significant part of US Jews embrace President Obama although he favors the enemies of the Jewish state (Photo: Moshe Zusman)

 

Theodor Herzl wanted to convene the first Zionist Congress in Munich, but faced the strong objection of the city's rabbi, who was afraid that it would cast a doubt on the Jews' loyalty to Germany. Many thought that more than Zionism solves anti-Semitism, it creates it. Vienna's chief rabbi even suggested that Herzl should be hospitalized. He was forced to hold the Congress in Basel – at a casino.

 

The discovery of the horrors of the Holocaust silenced the anti-Semitism in the world for a few years of grace, and harmony prevailed among the Jewish people as well, first around the struggle over the Jewish state and then over its establishment. A sort of consensus was created that the state would take in the Jews of the distressed countries and leave the Jews of the welfare countries alone. The latter will provide the donations for the absorption of the "refugees."

 

Gentiles in the European battlefield, including quite a few Israel haters, developed a perverted phenomenon of admiring the State of Israel precisely because of its alleged "non-Jewish" aggression.

 

All that ended after the Six-Day War. The Western world accepted a tiny Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land, but not real Jewish strength, and especially not a Jewish Jerusalem. This is how the distinction between being anti-Israel and anti-Semitic was born for a while: The Israelis, the occupiers and settlers, became the "bad guys," and the Jews – especially the "enlightened" ones, who fight the "occupation" – remained the good guys.

 

Jews who participated in this celebration and thought that the call "hit the Israelis!" would make people to forget the old call "hit the Jews!" were quickly proven wrong: The hatred was always against the Jews.

 

It's true that for a while, the "political correctness" allowed people to express animosity only against the Jewish Israelis, but the real intention was understood by every gentile. Only the Jews, as usual, refused to understand. Now it is being clearly explained it to them. The violent and terrorist anti-Semitism has reverted to its evil ways: Jews or Israelis, it's the same thing.

 

It's time for the State of Israel to reassess its stance. The Zionist Movement engaged in active fighting to deny the Diaspora. Should the state, its offspring, step into its shoes or stand aloof? And to what extent is the state allowed, as a state, to call on the citizens of another state to emigrate from their country to its country, even when they are Jewish?

 

In two cases, the answer appears to be clear: The desire of a Jew who has drawn away and doesn’t want to be linked to his Jewishness, for good or for bad, should be respected and he should be treated as a foreigner. On the other hand, a person who lets Israel's enemies use the fact that he is Jewish and serves as their king's evidence, he should be treated according to the paragraph in the Eighteen Benedictions, which begins with the words, "And informers shall have no hope."

 


פרסום ראשון: 04.28.15, 08:15
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